Home Depot used to be big time. Sure, it still is in terms of turnover and position on the Fortune 500, but there was a time when people were simply Apple-style passionate about shopping at Home Depot. And to work there, that was even better.
Bob Nardelli, now running Chrysler into the ground, shook the place up, moved away from some of the core tenets that made Home Depot great and left the place worse than it was before he got there.
If you know anyone with Home Depot connections, you know that he’s not exactly an Atlanta favorite.
Nardelli is out and now it looks like Richards Group, Dallas, is going to be out as well. As AdPulp reports, Home Depot is working with consultants as it prepares to put all aspects of its half-billion dollar communications business into review.
From a creative advertising perspective, Richards Group did functional work:
Retail is always challenging to advertise for, though Target is an example of where smart thinking and creativity can break through, and Home Depot’s ads always left me thinking that there was an opportunity missed. Especially in Home Depot’s heyday, when there was so much passion about the brand that was just never taken advantage of.
Balancing that out to some extent is my love for the Home Depot jingle/music bed.
Every time a Home Depot spot ran, I immediately knew what brand it was for even if I wasn’t looking at the television, and the homey, Americana sound fit perfectly into the idea of Home Depot helping the common man build his home and achieve the American Dream.
Richards Group and Home Depot marketing were disciplined about building the brand on the back of this memorable tune and sticking with it long enough for it to become ubiquitous and instantly memorable – which in this day and age of brand managers bouncing around from here to there like Hollywood starlets, each wanting to put their own special little stamp on the marketing, it saying a lot for their rigor and focus.
And it is the reason why, though the spots won’t ever win any awards, I like them.
It’s smart, disciplined advertising.
Nardelli is part of that cadre of executives who constantly fail upwards. It’s something that people much smarter than you and I have noticed, DB- many b-school case studies have been written about the phenomenon, yet it still continues unabashed.
My understanding it that advertising is the least of Home Depot’s problems. Recapturing the magic by getting back those employees who loved being DIYers should be their main priority.